I Don’t Wanna Go Back to the Island

Last fall was the tenth anniversary of the premiere of Lost, so this post is as timely as all the others. I thought it might be a good time to give the series a rewatch, but I thought again and decided that now was not the time.

There are some series I can watch over and over again; not in an OCD way, mind you. I can watch M*A*S*H pretty much at time, especially the early years with Trapper John. Even though I pretty much know all the dialogue by heart, I still find them funny. Yet, I have never watched Cheers or Seinfeld in reruns. Go figure. The same goes for Friends. I loved all those series, but what changed? Maybe it’s me. Maybe I got everything out of them the first time around.

Lost was my favorite TV series when it was on the first time around. It was a show with everything. It had: Smoke monsters. Polar bears. Donkey wheels. A movable island. A magic portal that dumped you in the middle of nowhere. A crazy French lady. A crazy Australian with a dead squirrel for a baby. Ghosts!

So, what’s not to love. It’s just that, for me anyway, Lost is a bit like Battlestar Galactica, in that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s not that there were episodes that were pointless, or mere filler, as with BSG, but there were storylines that I don’t want to relive. I’m not only talking about Paolo and Nikki, but the “Tailies” as well.

Yeah… I never really cared for that. I felt that it took away from the story, which to me, was the main characters. Or, the characters that we were introduced to in season one. Whichever. At least the series didn’t go careening offthe rails like Heroes did. But that’s another story.

The public seemed to believe that there was a grand plan for Lost, but they were just making it up as they went along. I don’t know which way is better for a series, especially on that will have a definitive ending. Some say you need to plan things out with charts and graphs and powerpoint presentations. Others have a vague idea where it’s going, but end up sailing wherever the wild wind blows them. I’m more the latter than the former, for every time I make a plan it goes up in smoke.